


Photonegative

by vondrostes



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Pregnancy Scares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 06:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11374341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vondrostes/pseuds/vondrostes
Summary: Waverly knows her sister is hiding something; what she doesn't realize is that Wynonna is hiding everything.





	Photonegative

**Author's Note:**

> EDITED TO ADD: Yeah, so fun fact I wrote this before watching any of Season 2 & before episode 5 even came out. (Also every time I came up with any other fic ideas before catching up with the show, they would end up in the actual series as well, so maybe the writers & I just miraculously have the same trains of thought when it comes to stuff like this. Fingers crossed for canon OT3.)
> 
> This is like straight out of a soap opera, I'm sorry. Tagged for both ships because the fic is written from Waverly's perspective but focuses on the Wyn/Doc/Dolls dynamic & the possible "results" of that dynamic.
> 
> Follow me on Twitter for more writing goodies: @vondrostes (personal) & @TerranAlleen (writing updates)

The Earps had a problem.

Or well, more specifically, Waverly had a problem—and that problem was named Wynonna.

Just when it seemed like things were finally starting to go their way, Wynonna had started acting real cagey. ‘Withdrawn’, Dolls had called her. And if Dolls was coming to Waverly for help, that meant something was really, really wrong.

The search for the remaining revenants wasn’t going _well_ , in so many words, but Waverly knew that Wynonna had secretly been grateful to take a break for once. They’d all been in go-mode since her twenty-seventh birthday, and after what had happened with Willa…well, they deserved a moment to finally take a breather.

Waverly watched in mild disgust as her sister devoured a plateful of fries in eight seconds flat. Champ would have been proud. Waverly, however, knew it to be a classic sign of anxiety for her older sister, who tended to binge eat to cope with her stress. Or tried to, at least.

“Dolls says you’re not sleeping?” she tried. It was the first time she’d actually brought up her reason for dragging Wynonna out for the day.

Wynonna narrowed her eyes. “X is talking to you? About me?”

“Is that really so hard to believe?” Waverly replied, slightly offended by the implication that Wynonna’s boyfriend—or whatever it is they were—wouldn’t come to Waverly for advice about her own sister.

“He doesn’t exactly like to open up,” Wynonna pointed out through a mouthful of her burger, and, yeah, valid point.

“He’s worried,” Waverly told her. “Is something going on?”

“No,” Wynonna replied too quickly. She glanced down for just a micro-second at her phone, lying flat on the table next to her food. Was she waiting for someone? “Why would something be going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Waverly. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned back against the vinyl seatback, exasperated with her sister’s odd and blatantly incriminating behavior. “You tell me.”

Wynonna looked pained, but Waverly knew that meant she was close to spitting out the truth. Wynonna had never been good at keeping secrets. “I…” she started to say, and then dropped her voice down to a whisper. “I think I might be pregnant.”

“What?” Waverly shrieked, drawing the heads of every diner patron.

Wynonna gave her a pointed look.

“Sorry,” Waverly whispered. “But you can’t just—I mean—how do you know?”

“I don’t,” Wynonna replied. She looked drained, like just the confession had sucked all the life out of her. “I drove out to the city to get a test but the pharmacist said the meds I’m taking might cause a false positive and that I should go get a blood test instead.”

“What meds?”

Wynonna rolled her eyes. “I stopped taking them, Waves, chillax.” When Waverly continued to stare at her with an expectant expression, Wynonna sighed and shook her head. “Tranquilizers. I’ve been having nightmares. X takes them too, it’s not a big deal.”

Waverly lifted an eyebrow. “I assume Dolls doesn’t have to worry about the drug interactions with birth control, though! I thought you guys were using condoms anyway just to be safe.”

Wynonna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Yeah, about that….”

But before she could finish her sentence, a waitress came by to check up on them, and both Waverly and Wynonna had to pretend like they weren’t just having the most uncomfortable discussion of all time. And then immediately after she left to get another basket of fries for Wynonna, a couple of the guys who used to hang out around Shorty’s all the time ended up in the booth directly behind them. Waverly could feel their eyes trailing over her as they passed, and she tugged her cardigan in tighter around herself, feeling acutely uncomfortable.

“Look, let’s just get out of here,” she suggested. “We can go back to the homestead and talk.”

“What about Nicole?” Wynonna protested, but she was already waving someone over to come box up the rest of her food.

“I mean, if you really don’t want me to tell her then I won’t,” Waverly offered with a frown. “But it’s not like she’s going to judge you for it.”

Wynonna shrugged, and Waverly decided that was as close to acquiescence as she was going to get.

They drove separately to the homestead; Waverly in her new car that she’d been saving up for over the past six months, Wynonna on her inherited bike she adored so much that she’d hardly ever accept a ride anywhere. Waverly supposed though that if she really was…pregnant…all of that would be over.

A lot of things would have to change. Wynonna couldn’t really expect to keep fighting revenants if she were pregnant, and who knew what they’d do after the baby was born?

All of this was forefront on Waverly’s mind when the two walked into the house and immediately flopped down onto either of the couches set up perpendicular to one another in the front room.

“Have you thought about…taking care of it?” Waverly asked her sister, trying to be as delicate as possible without dancing around the issue. It wasn’t the first time either of them had had a scare, though this was considerably more dire than an early morning run to the pharmacy for Plan B after a drunken tryst.

“I don’t even know if it’s—” Wynonna’s eyes were closed as she leaned back against the sofa, sprawled out across two of the cushions. “I still have to go get a blood test. At a clinic, I guess, I don’t want that shit getting out because one of the nurses in town couldn’t keep their big mouths shut for once.”

“Okay, but if it is positive?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Wynonna answered flatly. It wasn’t an answer at all, and nothing about her tone gave away her feelings about that solution one way or the other. There was a long pause then, where it seemed neither of them knew what to say, and then suddenly, Wynonna piped up again with a surprising request: “Can you get Doc over here?”

“Sure,” Waverly agreed easily, and she got up to go out to the refurbished barn where Doc had made himself a home over the past year or so.

He was asleep when she arrived (as he tended to be these days, often sleeping until at least three in the afternoon) splayed out face-down like a starfish on the mattress that he still hadn’t acquired a bedframe for. He claimed he liked it better this way, but Waverly thought he was too scared to go out to the city to buy proper furniture himself.

“Doc,” she said quietly, tip-toeing over to shake him awake after letting herself in. If he wanted privacy, he’d lock the door, but that was a rare for him lately.

He turned over and peered at her through one eye. “What seems to be the matter?” he asked, still sounding just as old-timey as ever. She doubted he’d ever truly assimilate.

“Wynonna’s here,” she told him. “She’s asking for you.”

Waverly didn’t explain why because she still wasn’t sure herself. Wynonna and Dolls had been together for months now, and as far as Waverly knew, her sister’s fling with the gunslinger had been extremely brief, and was now quite some time in the past. They were still close friends, but despite Wynonna’s attempts to seem like nothing ever fazed her, Waverly knew that she wasn’t as shameless as she made herself out to be. An unplanned pregnancy wasn’t exactly something Wynonna would be keen to ask advice on from every Black Badge associate in her contacts list.

Doc’s reaction was as equally mystifying as the request that prompted it. He jumped up without a word, took barely a second to throw on a plaid button-up and jeans over his sleep attire, and then practically bolted over to the main house, leaving Waverly in the dust.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she threw open the door and walked in to rejoin them, stopping in her tracks when she found the pair sitting closer than social convention would allow considering Doc was _not_ Wynonna’s boyfriend. “Um,” Waverly said, speechless for a few seconds before gathering her thoughts again. “Okay, seriously, what’s happening?”

“X is coming over to pick us up,” Wynonna explained, which explained exactly nothing to Waverly, who was still standing in the doorway looking at Wynonna and Doc in confusion. “I need to—I need to be sure before I can even think about any of this.”

“Us?” Waverly questioned. “You know about—?” she asked Doc as the furrow between her brows deepened dramatically.

“I was…aware of the possibility,” he replied cryptically.

There was the sound of a car honking from the front drive, which meant Wynonna must have texted Dolls to come pick her up before they’d even left the diner. Which Waverly could only assume meant that Wynonna had only agreed to come over to the homestead to retrieve Doc, and Waverly found herself feeling almost offended by that implication. Why didn’t Wynonna ask her to come with instead?

Waverly continued to block the doorway even as Doc and Wynonna got up off the couch to go meet Dolls outside. “Sorry,” she said, finally realizing that she was in the way after they looked at her expectantly for a minute. She walked outside ahead of them and nearly ran face-first into Dolls, who was standing at the bottom of the steps to the front porch like a sentinel, his arms crossed imposingly over his chest.

“Any of you want to tell me what all this about?” he asked, but he didn’t seem as annoyed as Waverly would have expected him to be, especially with Doc’s hand wrapped blatantly around Wynonna’s waist. She wasn’t sure what things were like back in his day, but Doc had been part of the modern world plenty long enough to know that things like that weren’t exactly typical between casual friends.

“Perhaps it would be better if we explained in the car,” Doc suggested, and Wynonna made a face in response to his statement that Waverly couldn’t even begin to interpret.

Dolls sighed and extended a hand out toward the car, gesturing for Doc and Wynonna to go ahead. “Fine.” Dolls waited until they’d walked past and Doc had helped Wynonna into the front passenger seat before getting into the back himself, and then turned to Waverly with an expectant look.

“You have to act surprised,” Waverly pleaded in a whisper, trying not to look too suspicious as she stood there on the front steps in full view of Wynonna if she happened to be looking out the car window.

“Hit me,” Dolls replied.

“Wynonna thinks she might be pregnant,” Waverly told him all in one breath.

Dolls’s expression didn’t change. “Did she say…who…?” he asked finally.

Waverly stared back at him flabbergasted. “What? What do you mean, who?”

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Thanks for finally getting it out of her. I mean—”

“I got it,” Waverly interrupted hastily. She waved a hand toward the car where Wynonna and Doc were still waiting. “Just…go.”

She watched as Dolls marched back to his car. He glanced back at Waverly just once before getting in, and then sped off down the drive, nearly clipping the mailbox as he turned out toward the road. Waverly closed her eyes and sighed. She was going to take a nap.

She woke sometime later to someone touching her face. For a moment, she thought it was Wynonna, but when Waverly rolled over onto her back, there were brown eyes staring down at her, not blue.

“Hey,” she said through a yawn. “What time is it?”

“Just after three,” Nicole replied. “And speaking of which, you wouldn’t happen to know why Dolls just suddenly took off in the middle of a meeting on the same day Wynonna calls in sick, would you?”

Waverly sat up with a frown. “It’s not what you think.”

“I’m not thinking anything, Waverly, I’m asking.”

Waverly sighed as she leaned into Nicole’s shoulder, breathing in deeply when Nicole placed a hesitant hand against her lower back. “Wynonna thinks she might be pregnant.” She wasn’t expecting the sudden jolt from Nicole in response to those words and Waverly looked up at her girlfriend curiously. “What?”

“Might be?”

“They don’t know yet,” Waverly explained. “Dolls took the—Wynonna to the city to get a blood test to be sure.” She decided it might be better to omit Doc’s addition to the road trip, at least until she figured out why he was tagging along in the first place.

“What is she going to do if it’s positive?” Nicole asked.

Waverly shrugged. “I don’t know. She barely wanted to acknowledge the possibility it might happen, so…. She hadn’t even talked to Dolls yet before they left.”

“Do you…do you think she’d want to give it up for adoption?”

There was something in Nicole’s voice that made Waverly jerk her head up sharply to meet her girlfriend’s eyes. And when she did so, there was something in them that Waverly hadn’t expected to see: hope.

“I don’t even think she’s thought about it,” Waverly replied cautiously. “Why?”

“I was just thinking that maybe we could….”

“What, adopt my sister’s kid?” It came out harsher than Waverly had meant it to. “Isn’t it a little early to be considering that? I mean, we don’t even know if Wyonna’s pregnant, let alone—”

“Don’t you want kids?” Nicole asked her earnestly, cutting off Waverly’s near-hysterical rant.

“What?” It was the last question Waverly had expected anyone to ask her, let alone her girlfriend of all people, especially since Wynonna was the one dealing with the pregnancy scare, not her. “I don’t—I don’t know, maybe.”

Something in Nicole’s face practically crumbled, but Waverly didn’t have a chance to think of a way to fix what she’d said before her phone started buzzing in her pocket. She fumbled for it frantically, finally putting a bit of distance between herself and Nicole as she pulled it out to look at the new text message from Wynonna.

It was a picture: of Wynonna, Doc, and Dolls, with Wynonna in the center. She was grinning so widely her eyes were practically shut, and she was holding up a piece of paper with the word ‘NEGATIVE’ typed in big bold letters while Dolls stared down at her with a fond smile.

But it was Doc, standing in the righthand corner of the photo, that drew Waverly’s attention as he stared vacantly at the camera, looking almost like he’d been photoshopped in as an afterthought. There was something about his expression that Waverly recognized, and wished she didn’t—because it was the same look she’d just seen on Nicole’s face after Waverly had confessed to her that she didn’t know if she ever wanted kids.

And just like that, Waverly understood.


End file.
